January

Publishers often want to work closely with e-book outlets — possibly a little too closely — but it’s rare that they involve themselves directly. Pearson is taking that uncommon step by making a 5 percent, $89.5 million investment in Nook Media, the joint venture between Barnes & Noble and Microsoft. Some of the reasoning won’t be made public until Barnes & Noble provides holiday sales results on January 3rd, but Pearson is clear that it’s furthering its online education plans: it wants Nook Media’s distribution skills to make a “seamless and effective experience for students.” Just when we’ll see this harmony is still up in the air, though. Nook Media has yet to outline what Microsoft’s partnership means for e-books and e-readers, let alone how Pearson factors in. We’re not expecting a sea change until companies start speaking up.

Instagram changes its terms of service, Facebook wants a piece of the SnapChat pie, and Rhapsody launches an iPad app.

Privacy and Terms of Service Changes on InstagramEffective January 16, 2013, Instagram is updating its Privacy and Terms of Service documents. The new policies, which can be read on their blog, addresses sharing user information as a part of Facebook and new spam/abuse policies. The biggest change, found in the ‘Rights’ section of the new Terms of Service, gives Instagram the right to use your photos and profile information in ads without compensation. [Instagram Blog]

Facebook to Launch Its Own Snapchat Competitor AppFacebook is prepping to launch a service that will go head-to-head with Snapchat, a popular app that lets users send photos and short videos to one another—which are then automatically deleted after a brief increment of time. Facebook’s as-yet unnamed application will be, much like its Messenger and Camera apps, entirely self-contained and separate from the main Facebook app. Look for its release before the year’s end. [AllThingsD]

A new Instagram privacy policy goes into effect on January 16th, 2013. The service will now be sharing your data with its new owner Facebook. Get used to it.

Basically, Instagram has updated a few of the subhead sections of its policy to reflect the fact that it is a part of Facebook now. Instagram can now share information like cookies, log files, device identifiers, location data, and usage data,with “with businesses that are legally part of the same group of companies that Instagram is part of.” According to the Instagram blog, it’s a wonderful thing for you:

Our updated privacy policy helps Instagram function more easily as part of Facebook by being able to share info between the two groups. This means we can do things like fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly, and build better features for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used.

Less spam? Great! Of course, this also means that Instagram is heaping its data over with the privacy nightmare that’s Facebook. The data will definitely be used to target better advertising at you on Facebook, and to serve you advertisements on Instagram whenever that starts happening. Here is the relevant section from the new policy:

Affiliates may use this information to help provide, understand, and improve the Service (including by providing analytics) and Affiliates’ own services (including by providing you with better and more relevant experiences).

Back in January, YouTube announced that it was launching around 160 channels of fresh, original content, that it would invest in to help it compete with traditional cable and network programming. Less than a year on, it’s axing over half of them.

YouTube injected $200 million into the project, which includes channels like The Onion and Jay-Z’s Life and Times. Seems the rewards haven’t been as forthcoming as they’d like: 60 percent are being axed, and YouTube will cream off 100 percent of incoming revenue from the ones that aren’t renewed.

A lot of the hubbub yesterday was around the Nexus 4’s support of Miracast, courtesy of Android 4.2. If you don’t want to spring for a dedicated TV box or invest in a whole new set of gadgets to supersize your mobile experience, then you may be excited to hear that the handset also supports SlimPort. We haven’t heard much from the DisplayPort-based standard since January, but we’re happy to report it finally appears to be ready for primetime. Analogix, the company behind the tech, already has its first adapter up for sale on Amazon (at the more coverage link), which takes the Nexus 4’s micro-USB port and allows you to connect an HDMI cable to it — so long as that proposition is worth $30 to you. Eventually DVI, VGA and DisplayPort will also be added to list of output options, potentially making the this handset’s charging port the most versatile micro-USB jack in the smartphone market. For more, check out the PR after the break.

Grabbing the best prices is all about where and when you shop. Retailer reporting service SumAll has identified the best (and worst) days and months to find online deals and packed it all in this handy calendar infographic.

The data is compiled from over 3,000 merchants and almost half a billion transactions over four years.

It probably won’t surprise you that November offers the biggest discounts (an average of 5.99%), followed by post-holiday January (4.95%), but the calendar also warns you that March is a dismal time to shop if you’re looking for sales (2.76%).

The best days to buy are Tuesday and Thursday. Forget big savings on Sunday.

And new companies (just opened or under two years old) offer the biggest deals versus established ones. So don’t wait to shop at a new site.

Here’s the whole graphic, which includes which states offer the best deals (click to expand, right click to save):

Keep in mind that there are specific days and months that are best for particular shopping categories (see our best time to buy anything guide or this handy infographic). If you’re just planning your shopping in general, though, consider waiting until the days and months with the highest discounts.

Despite all Netflix’s misgivings up until early this year, the service has got its users watching more video than ever. CEO Reed Hastings recently took to Facebook to announce that subscribers have watched over one billion hours of content in a single month, for the “first time ever.” As Tech Crunch points out, that’s about one hour of video-viewing per day against the five hours that the regular ole tube garners. Hastings also mentioned he’s excited about the service’s exclusive rights to House of Cards and Arrested Development, declaring that they’ll help to “blow these records away.” If you’ll recall, back in January the company claimed 26 million streaming subscribers worldwide, compared to just over 10 million who opted for discs — it’ll be very interesting to see how these fluctuate given its newer takes on content.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into why Groupon revised its first quarterly earnings report as a public company, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Groupon made the revision on Friday after market close, when the company discovered that a higher number of customers than usual returned their coupons unused in January, says the report. The revision increased Groupon’s loss by $22.6 million.

Groupon’s stock plunged almost 17% today.

The Journal reports that the company’s chief accounting officer Joe Del Preto discovered that the number of refunds in January was higher than all of Groupon’s models had predicted.

According to the Journal, Groupon did not have enough money in its reserves to cover the refunds.

The SEC has not launched a formal investigation, says the report. Groupon’s top execs have reportedly examined the situation and are confident that only certain types of coupons are being returned.

So this could all blow over and turn out to be no big deal. But drawing the attention of the SEC is never a good thing. Especially when Groupon had to amend its IPO filing twice after the SEC complained.

Digital Consigliere

Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.